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User Research: Visual Focus Enhancement Study

I partnered with the Human Factors team to complete a comprehensive study around visual treatments that affect concentration and cognitive performance in digital interfaces.

My Role: I helped design the prototype with my design counterpart, the study, and complete the analysis but I did not participate in conducting or setting up the actual study with participants.

View Results

Testing Our Focus Hypotheses

Defining Focus

The brain's ability to concentrate or center its attention on something for a sustained period of time, resulting in increased alertness and targeted visual attention on relevant elements rather than distractors.

Eye Tracking Analysis

Measured fixations on target items versus distractor elements, analyzing duration and frequency patterns to quantify visual attention allocation during task completion.

Research Measures

  • Eye tracking with auto-tagging
  • EEG monitoring (mental workload, fatigue, interest)
  • Task performance metrics (completion rate, reading rate, accuracy)
  • Subjective user responses

Broad Hypothesis

Applying a visual treatment to not-in-focus UI (dimming) will result in higher focus than non-treated sessions, evidenced by longer fixation duration and improved task performance.

Study Protocol

01

Set-Up Phase (~30 min)

Participants were fitted with EEG caps and we prepared functional prototypes with two experimental conditions per session.

02

Pre-Session Baseline (~10 min)

Administered ADACL survey to establish baseline mood and alertness levels.

03

Document Reading Task (~15 min x 2)

Participants completed GRE reading passages with comprehension questions under both conditions. Performance metrics included completion percentage and accuracy rates across experimental treatments.

04

Post-Task Assessment (~10 min)

Collected subjective focus ratings.

Does a Visual Treatment Help People Focus?

Will people get more done?

Measuring task completion rates and accuracy to determine if visual treatments enhance productivity and cognitive performance during focused work sessions.

Will people feel more alert?

Using EEG measurements and subjective assessments to evaluate changes in mental alertness between treatment conditions.

Will people be less distracted?

Analyzing eye-tracking data to quantify visual attention patterns and measure reduction in distractor fixations during task execution.

No Visual Treatment

Visual Treatment

Findings

Individuals required less mental workload to complete tasks when using the visual treatment


Less mental workload was exerted and reading rate was 1.25 times faster when using the visual treatment condition.

Individuals who have higher "mind-wandering" tendencies benefited even more from the visual treatment.

Eye tracking shows visual treatment helps focus on task right off the bat


Subjective Focus Improvements

Users reported feeling more focused and on-task while using the visual treatment


The visual treatment left users feeling more energized and less fatigued


Study Conclusion

Our findings confirm that optimized visual treatments significantly improve user focus, reduce cognitive workload, and enhance overall performance, leading to a more effective and less fatiguing experience.

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